Glenn Gould hires a conductor – and rehearses himself

The last of Daniel Poulin’s fascinating contributions for 2021.

More, we hope, next year.

Daniel writes:

In great secrecy Gould and the Hamilton Philarmonic met to run through Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto. A young Juillard student, Jon Klibonoff was hired by Gould to stand for himself. Gould took a slow tempo for the first movement and even a much slower one for the second movement, always a favourite of his “the magnificent, glowing Adagio” he would often say. He told the orchestra he wanted… “to treat it almost like a Wesleyan hymn” and to conduct it not with three slow beats to the bar, but with twelve moderate beats. The experience was not successful; Gould lacked the technique to convey his idiosyncratic intentions clearly and to maintain ensemble and continuity. Finally, Gould was not happy with the session.

UPDATE from Mark Childs:
I was principal viola for these sessions with the Hamilton Philharmonic.

The problem with the second movement was that Glenn was subdividing the quarter notes into THREE beats, effectively making it 9/8 time rather than 3/4 time. This was causing great confusion in the orchestra, where most of the subdivisions were 16th or 32nd notes.

At a pause in the rehearsal I approached him to advise him of this. It didn’t seem to help.

You can hear Mark at 6:45 trying to reason with Gould.